Bryce Harper missed out when the original NL roster was announced, again on the Final Vote and again as the first two NL All-Stars went down, but he will go to Kansas City after all. He was chosen as the injuredGiancarlo Stanton‘s replacement on the NL roster Saturday, making him the youngest position player ever to go to an All-Star Game.

The 19-year-old Harper is batting .283/.357/.478 with eight homers and 25 RBI in 244 at-bats since being called up by the Nationals. He spoke earlier this week about maybe preferring to rest over the All-Star break, but it should be a more interesting party with him around.

Except Pence’s numbers are better on the road.310 .366 .517 .883 than at home .256 .333 .450 .783.

Fowler is red hot right now and not sure on your Fowler D argument. Everyone’s favorite ‘stat’ WAR says Alfonso Soriano in the 4th best defensive outfielder in the NL behind the Atlanta 3. So…. there’s that.

That said, without Harper, the media will kill us on him not being in the game. Fans want him, put him in.

paperlions - Jul 7, 2012 at 11:18 PM

In WAR, CFers are compared only to CFers and LFers and compared only to LFers….so even though you can sort by all OFers, they are not all standardized to the same level of performance. LFers, as a group, are horrible fielders, so if a guy isn’t a butcher in LF, he’ll rate very well. For example, Gardner is a good OF, but WAR made him look better than he really was in LF because it compared him to a bunch of guys that can barely field at all.

Pence’s actual home/road splits are irrelevant. I know it seems counter intuitive, but it is true. If you hit crappy in a hitter friendly stadium, that doesn’t mean the stadium didn’t help you….if it wasn’t hitter friendly, you would have hit even crappier. So Pence’s home numbers would be even worse if he had been hitting in DC instead of Philly.

It’s clever, but I’m not a fan. Each of my (half) season tickets says, “Ignite Your Natitude.” Sat what?

“Natitude” is this year’s advertising slogan, intended to sell tickets and gets us to cheer when they want us to cheer. I cheer when warranted. Fortunately, the Nats have done a lot to warrant cheering.

Seems “Natitude” is catching on and may last beyond this season. I have mixed feelings about that.

First 300 million dollar contract, try a bit higher Mr. Lerner. If things keep going this way for Bryce, which is a good thing, his contract in 2018 is going to break all kinds of records. Baseball is going to have to get a salary cap, players can’t get contracts bigger than the value of other MLB franchises.

Some people are describing the new luxury tax penalties as strong enough to make the luxury tax essentially a salary cap. When you consider the increase in tv revenues for some other large market teams I think you could at least argue that MLB has a soft cap similar to the NBA’s, albeit with no hard cap above it. Moving forward I could see 5 or more teams operating right around the $189 million number.